Toward a Culture of Health in the United States: Introducing the HPP Arts in Public Health Supplement

Abstract

The arts—and the arts and culture sector—offer fertile ground for achieving a culture of health in the United States. The arts and artists are agents of change and can help enable this vision and also address the most critical public health issues we are contending with, including COVID-19 and racism. The arts provide means for engaging dialogue, influencing behaviors, disrupting paradigms and fueling social movements. The arts uncover and illuminate issues. They engage us emotionally and intellectually. They challenge assumptions. They call out injustice. They drive collective action. They heal—making arts + public health collaboration very relevant in this historic moment. In this special Health Promotion Practice supplement on arts in public health, you’ll find powerful examples and evidence of how cross-sector collaboration between public health and the arts can advance health promotion goals and impacts, and make health promotion programs not only more accessible to diverse populations but also more equitable and effective in addressing the upstream systems, policies, and structures that create health disparities. You will see how the arts can empower health communication, support health literacy, provide direct and measurable health benefits to individuals and communities, and support coping and resilience in response to COVID-19. This issue itself exemplifies cross-sector collaboration, as it was created through partnership between Health Promotion Practice, the Society for Public Health Education, ArtPlace America, and the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine, and presents voices from across the public health, arts, and community development sectors.

“It’s Like Youth are Talking Into a Microphone That is not Plugged in”: Engaging Youth in Disaster Risk Reduction Through Photovoice

“…The arts have the power to address issues upstream and make public health programs more accessible and equitable for diverse populations ( Sonke et al, 2021 ). Not only should messaging be accessible, it should also be digestible and palatable for citizens.…”

“…Not only should messaging be accessible, it should also be digestible and palatable for citizens. Compared to text, art can foster emotional responses to messaging ( Lafrenière et al, 2014 ) and be a venue for meaningful and engaging dialogue which can influence behaviors, assumptions, and catalyze social change ( Sonke et al, 2021 ). When combining arts and science as a strategy for knowledge translation it is important to collaborate with stakeholder groups to identify the need for an arts-based strategy, as well as what art form is most appropriate to convey the messaging ( Archibald et al, 2018 ).…”

Relationships between arts participation, social cohesion, and wellbeing: An integrative review and conceptual model

“…The review utilized a broad and inclusive concept of “arts participation”. The search strategy included a broad range of terms representing the arts (See S1 Search Strategy: Sample Search Strategy for PubMed), and both our search strategy and inclusion criteria reflected the definition of “arts participation” developed for the purpose of public health research (32). This definition includes modes, or ways, in which people engage with the arts, and includes examples of various art forms intended to frame arts participation broadly and inclusively.…”

When Artists Go to Work: On the Ethics of Engaging the Arts in Public Health

“…One of the significant challenges of this undertaking was the climate of distrust in both vaccines and the public health system, along with deepening political polarization. The public health leaders on this team who shared experiences of working on vaccination campaigns in other parts of the world recognized that they would never—in those places—launch a campaign such as the United States was embarking upon without artists 1 and the songs, dances, drama, and other art that they make 2 . They also recognized that artists around the world, including in the United States, were already ahead of the public health curve in beginning to use their arts and their platforms to share information and generate dialogue about vaccines 3…”